I'm sorry to be the one to say this but a complete rewrite of the Java library is not only extremely time consuming but also expensive.

I don't really see this going anywhere, and all it would take to down this expensive project is for Sun to release Java under a real OS license and just because Sun reps are currently saying this isn't possible doesn't automatically mean it wont happen in the near future, or that something isn't being planned behind closed doors.

It's expensive, time consuming and risky.Dare I say no sane person with any business/project management experience would allow this proposal to go ahead?

Even if you help sun to create a better Mustang you'll have to give all your rights away to a commercial company that may do almost anything with your code and you get a loosy t-shirt, a very good deal

What would happen if: * Sun goes bankrupt * Sun is bought by a company not interrested in spending $$ on Java or even wants to destroy it (MS). * Sun descides to charge for Java to get money back * ....

I agree that this are horror-examples, but they COULD happen.

So in your case I would be thankful that these guys do the work you're actually too lazy. Btw. I am quite sure you are one of the guys which also did not help SUN, just claim other should do so because they want a better java, right?

At the end of the day, the licensing conditions of the Java I have today can not be changed, since they're currently in my hands and I have the license. A future version could be re-licensed a different way, support could be withdrawn, but I'd still have the version I have now, much like any open source project for that matter.

Copyright owners can always change their mind at a later date, tis the way of the world.

Even if you help sun to create a better Mustang you'll have to give all your rights away to a commercial company that may do almost anything with your code and you get a loosy t-shirt, a very good deal

You're deceiving yourselves. This is exactly the same with the open-source project: you're giving away your rights to a bunch of people who may do almost anything with your code, including using it to help corrupt dictators commit genocide. You've just been gotcha'd by oss marketing campaigns.

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What would happen if:

Well, if you stop and think for a minute about your own question, the answers are very very simple.

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* Sun goes bankrupt * Sun is bought by a company not interrested in spending $$ on Java or even wants to destroy it (MS). * Sun descides to charge for Java to get money back

Instantaneously, IBM will make a free one, and HP will release their couple for free. And they will group together with 20 other corporates and start a new industry consortium to make a new, free, java. Which may well end up like FORTRAN, COBOL, SQL, etc - but it WILL continue.

Oh, and the end result will be a lot better quality than anything an open source project is going to achieve (unless, of course, they go open-souce with this themselves).

Just *THINK* about the number of people and businesses entirely dependent on java and the huge number of programemrs etc. Sun couldn't close down java now if they tried. "oss java" is using battle cries for wars that have already been won; as they say, "the genie is out of the bottle" (and it has been since around the time IBM first released a JVM that was faster than Sun's).

EDIT: this isn't wishful thinking, in case you were wondering: it would simply cost IBM billions of dollars a year for java to disappear. It's worth them giving away a decent JVM cross-platform for free to everyone just to protected their existing business investments. The same is true for many other companies (IBM just happens to have one of the most widely used and advanced JVM's after Sun).

It might also be worth noting that one of Harmony's goals is a fully compatible java impl by submitting it for Sun's compatibility tests, and that Sun's Graham Hamilton indicated that Sun will probably participate in the project in one way or the other. My view is that whatever comes out of this project proposal, this initiative can only be seen as positive for the java community.

My view is that whatever comes out of this project proposal, this initiative can only be seen as positive for the java community.

One thing bugs me: that old chestnut of having your users complain "your game doesn't work" and after wasting ages trying to work out why you discover it's because they're running buggy oss software.

Given how many bugs there are in Sun's JVM's despite the compatibility testing I'd be much happier not to have OSS java in existence, because OSS projects (*especially* apache ones!) tend to be very buggy indeed, and only work well for a very narrow subset of use-cases and hardware and software configs: most oss people simply don't have a clue about how to do app testing properly (or refuse to do it).

Incidentally, the crapness of the OSS java already in existnece (the ?classpath? project etc) has already caused developers I know to spurn java. They had to be dragged kicking and screaming towards sun's java, and then were like "oh, wow, java's actually pretty good". Intensely frustrating .

One of the people on my team is an expert in apache, yet In the last 3 months we've found 5 of the most common modules are so badly broken as to be completely unusable: they simply do not work to do the job they are trying to do.

Basically, I'd be happy if such projects weren't used by anyone until they'd passed compatibility testing, AND if compatibility testing were made more rigorous; no - I'd be *delighted*. But as it stands it will give me no advantages yet I'm sure it's going to destroy one of my biggest advantages with java: WORA. I *hate* write-once-debug-everywhere, and oss java takes us back to the bad old days before the sun-on-windows+linux+OS-X (by proxy).

Other than that (which is really just one issue: the negative impact of a buggy-in-new-ways JVM) I'd be very happy with OSS java in existence. Assuming of course that NO FORKS ARE ALLOWED. That would just be hellish.

well, you seem really experienced using OSS software. Had you problems setting up apache2 to get PHP and MySQL on your WinXP-PROFESSIONAL box, because there was no al-in-one install package (indeed there are one ;-) )?

I also thing that the Harmony project can only be seen prositive for the java community...

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neously, IBM will make a free one, and HP will release their couple for free. And they will group together with 20 other corporates and start a new industry consortium to make a new, free, java.

Are you able to guarantee me that this will happen?Or is it nothing more than a whish?You know, both, IBMs, Suns, Bea's, SGIs JVMs are all based upon SUN classes which means at leat 75% of their source is owned by SUN.

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Oh, and the end result will be a lot better quality than anything an open source project is going to achieve (unless, of course, they go open-souce with this themselves).

You write this in future tense. Proove it to me, start your time-machine.I've seen a lot REALLY good oss software, compared to java java is a big bunch of bugs with a company behind needing 2y+ for fixing bugs.

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Just *THINK* about the number of people and businesses entirely dependent on java and the huge number of programemrs etc. Sun couldn't close down java now if they tried.

Yes, a lot of power for SUN. They could press out tons of money, just because people NEED their technology to continue.The license you have to sign to implement a JVM upon SUN's classes allows SUN within 14 days to prohibit you to distribute your JVM (ibm, bea, hp, JET, ..) any further. All the power lies in their hands, wwwooowww..Sun has prooven (this is not only a vague forcast like yours) to do exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time,

Sun are brilliant at getting things almost entirely wrong at every turn but frankly if there are a bunch of people actually clever enough, dedicated enough, and enthusiastic enough to actually do this, I'd rather Sun hired them, paid them more money than they could hope for, and put them to work on the massive investment of code that the J2SE currently is.

I currently personally manage 10 linux desktops and approx 10 linux servers (for 4 entirely unrelated organizations). That's just at the moment, randomly; it's not even really my job, it's just a sideline I happen to be doing because I have so much intimate familiarity with it.

At work I've just finished leading a project to massively customize a major BSD licensed oss system, and we've contributed code, marketing, and support to the original project. We're currently configuring a system to server 50 million hits an hour where we've just rejected Apache, Cocoon, JBoss, Jetty, TT, Mason, Squid, perbal, and several others after a 3 month evaluation. I have a pretty good in-depth knowledge of OSS and it's features and flaws. I even created a couple of OSS projects, one of which is still on SF.net being actively used by a fair number of people. So, feel free to patronise me, but at the same time you probably ought to listen and take my comments seriously.

Obviously, you didn't know any of this, but perhaps you might have wanted to ask first

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I also thing that the Harmony project can only be seen prositive for the java community...

Yes; I note that you conveniently and completely ignore all the big bad problems I pointed out. Obviously, if you ignore the bad stuff, there's only positive stuff left ...

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I've seen a lot REALLY good oss software, compared to java java is a big bunch of bugs with a company behind needing 2y+ for fixing bugs.

I'm afraid, then, that you probably don't know that much about what java is and what it does. I'm as frustrated as everyone else by some of the inane decisions Sun execs make about allocation of development budget, HOWEVER I also have a good understanding of how unpleasant some of the crap they deal with actually is. Sure, it's terrible that webstart can't even report the bugs properly, BUT on the other hand have you *any* idea what it takes to provide cross-platform hardware-accessing libraries? Or to write compilers? (although sun did particularly badly on this in the networking in 1.4, they could and should have done much much better, it doesn't change the fact that it's tough stuff).

We're currently configuring a system to server 50 million hits an hour where we've just rejected Apache, Cocoon, JBoss, Jetty, TT, Mason, Squid, perbal, and several others after a 3 month evaluation. I have a pretty good in-depth knowledge of OSS and it's features and flaws. I even created a couple of OSS projects, one of which is still on SF.net being actively used by a fair number of people. So, feel free to patronise me, but at the same time you probably ought to listen and take my comments seriously.

So, why did you choose open source technology?Its even harder after this statements to take you serious since you disagree with yourself. You choose oss stuff since its better and/or cheaper than commercial technology, but you said stuff like:

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Oh, and the end result will be a lot better quality than anything an open source project is going to achieve (unless, of course, they go open-souce with this themselves).

So, whats the point?

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Yes; I note that you conveniently and completely ignore all the big bad problems I pointed out.

Why? - Harmony or Classpath ARE NOT Java, you can read this statement almost anywhere. If you want to be compatible its your choice, you are not forced anyway.And if you support those alternatives you maybe would reach customers that never ever would install a sun-jvm for whatever reason.

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I'm afraid, then, that you probably don't know that much about what java is and what it does.

I know what Java is, what Java does and how it does archive it goals and yes its hard to build such a beast.But whats the point, I just can't see it. If I see a bug in GNU/Classpath I try to fix it, since I am really interrested to get things done. I can be sure that the code will always be GPL and not be legally mis-used by companies generating money out of my work and sending me a t-shirt for it!I also found some bugs I was not able to fix, but this is a lot more joy than:* Filling out a but report* Waiting a month for the first repsonse* Explain the engineer why this is a bug* Wait 2 weeks* Receive NO message that your bug was accepted* Wait 2y till your bug is fixed.

The sun jre is great in terms of features and performance, but I've seen so many bugs in so many different areas that I think about giving up writing bug-reports...

If I see a bug in GNU/Classpath I try to fix it, since I am really interrested to get things done. I can be sure that the code will always be GPL and not be legally mis-used by companies generating money out of my work and sending me a t-shirt for it!

GNU Classpath won't even give you the T-Shirt... so you get much more from Sun.

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I also found some bugs I was not able to fix, but this is a lot more joy than:* Filling out a but report* Waiting a month for the first repsonse* Explain the engineer why this is a bug* Wait 2 weeks* Receive NO message that your bug was accepted* Wait 2y till your bug is fixed.

You have the same options to submit a fix... AND you would get a T-Shirt.. so you get more out of it than helping GNUClasspath, yet you don't do it.

You are just being paranoid about giving away your code for "free" to some evil corporation.Are you really that concerned about the fixes that you could submit to Sun? Are they that amazing that you think you shouldn't give them to Sun? Won't having them fixed in an official JRE benefit you enough?

Your contributions to Classpath are probably MORE likely to be "mis-used by companies generating money out of [your] work"

The OSS way: make all the bugs somebody else's problem.. "Hey you've got the source, you can fix it yourself" ... no thanks, I have my own code to deal with.

GNU Classpath won't even give you the T-Shirt... so you get much more from Sun.You have the same options to submit a fix... AND you would get a T-Shirt.. so you get more out of it than helping GNUClasspath, yet you don't do it.

You are just being paranoid about giving away your code for "free" to some evil corporation. Are you really that concerned about the fixes that you could submit to Sun? Are they that amazing that you think you shouldn't give them to Sun? Won't having them fixed in an official JRE benefit you enough?

Don't you see the difference? I am not concerned about fixes I send to SUN but:* If I have a look at JRE/JDK's source I may not work further on free java runtimes* Other copanies generate revenue out of my code, I don't want that. When contributing to Classpath I can always be sure to get access to the whole whereas its suns right to not give the source away form one day to another, maybe even charge for it.

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The OSS way: make all the bugs somebody else's problem.. "Hey you've got the source, you can fix it yourself" ... no thanks, I have my own code to deal with.

To get something fixes is in the OSS world as likely as to get it fixes by SUN, both may take ages if currently no-one is working on...

But i guess it's ok for you to generate money out of SUN's code by using Java in a commercial project, isn't it? And i don't really see the difference between contributing to Java and contributing to OSS. In both cases, you would help to improve (hopefully) a product's quality and others (including yourself) will benefit from this. Do you really think that no company is making money from OSS just because it's under GPL or BSD?

But i guess it's ok for you to generate money out of SUN's code by using Java in a commercial project, isn't it? And i don't really see the difference between contributing to Java and contributing to OSS. In both cases, you would help to improve (hopefully) a product's quality and others (including yourself) will benefit from this. Do you really think that no company is making money from OSS just because it's under GPL or BSD? [/qoute]Well, since its GPL its also my project, I have te same rights as all others.With Java this isn't true - I have to eat what SUN gives me and that does not always taste great ;-)

You are right, I am creating money out of my Java projects, but SUN could also create money out of Java in much more intelligent ways than they try for now.Java was always more or less ignored by management, now after a long time they try to compete in the Java-IDE market which is almost dead thankis to eclipse and netbeans.

SUN won't just open-source Java because its good for us. We know that they and us would have many benefits from it, but they wont do it simply because they alone control what people can do with Java and in that way they control their own profits with that technology.

The idea that Java is free is actualy a very clever marketing decoy. Java is in fact free to some extent but not as free as a GPLed application. You can download java for free, create applications in Java using very good IDEs like Eclipse and Netbeans for free. All the univ projects i have being doing lately i made them with Java and Eclipse. The other projects related to networks i made them with GCC and linux.

I don't think the movement to open-source Java is so strong as it was before. Right now the linux community is moving towards building their own virtual machine. Something that has nothing to do with Java. Homestly i hope to see one soon that beats the crap to the javavm.

Note that im not gratefull to what i have learned with Java, but the java boys could use some though competition to push their own tech forward.

Well, since its GPL its also my project, I have te same rights as all others.

And with Sun's Java you will also have the same rights as everyone else using it. With the one exception of Sun itself and the licensees, and they are already giving it away to anyone. Really, I don't see any *significant* argument here. Sure Sun will get some money for licensing the code. So what? How does that stop you from using the Java that has your fixes to get your work done and make your money?

And with Sun's Java you will also have the same rights as everyone else using it. With the one exception of Sun itself and the licensees, and they are already giving it away to anyone. Really, I don't see any *significant* argument here.

And if you want to *really* nitpick, this is the same case with GPL. Everybody has the exact same rights HOWEVER!, the copyright holder may choose to relicense the project to anything s/he likes.

Yes, till now its given away free for everyone. But what will be in 5 years?Can anybody GUARANTEE me that Java will be available in 10 years as free as it is know. I don't want to waste months of writing programs and beeing not able to continue further just because SUN decided not to give the runtime away for free - btw. even greater if I contributed code to the JRE, maybe I'll get one free ;-)

Everytime I come up with this argument, there are guys who try to block, like they want not think about bad-case scenarious. They close their eyes and hope the best. I don't close my eyes and try to crate GNU/Classpath compatible programs...

Microsoft and Sun have been kissy kissy as of late.Do you believe that ultimately Microsoft will buy Java if Sun goes bankrupt?If they do, how would Java developers react over this? (I don't mean emotional reaction)

If Microsoft really did aquire Sun, I expect all JVM developers would be moved over to the .NET runtime and Java would be put under a "termination of support" plan that will cause most developers to switch to C# within one year.

Oh, and landfills for miles around will mysteriously become full of charcoal-and-blue hardware, and no one will claim responsibility...

Not only MS, but there could be many companies that would buy SUN but are maybe not interrested in continuing java.Many developers think in long-term, rather than now till midnight. Its not funny if your whole software is worthless overnight!

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